Sandra’s Miscellany

Yesterday I attended the funeral of David Zeh. I worked for ZEH Software for about eight years, give or take, in a variety of jobs: technical writing (first contract and then later full-time as the business grew), as a product manager, and finally in marketing.

Mr. Zeh was one of those bosses you always want to have around. He didn’t get in your way, he understood your job concerns, and he did everything he could to treat his employees with respect and fairness. He created an environment in which we could be independent and creative, and that enabled me to grow from technical writing into project management. During one particularly rocky period, three employees resigned from the company, and all Mr. Zeh had to do was come in from his semi-retirement and walk around the office to see the developers and QA people weren’t happy, something that had escaped both our middle manager and upper management.

But Mr. Zeh was attuned to the universe in a different way. Maybe it was his love of music or animals that made him open to perceiving people — people are as much “creatures” as those he so loved — as they truly were. He brought a child’s sense of wonder and discovery to everything he did, and was a delight to talk to. And he was sharper than any tack I’ve known; the software developers used to grin (with envy, perhaps?) that some of Mr. Zeh’s code was still in a couple of the products after 15 years because it would be such a hairy prospect to rewrite it all.

He was a good and kind man.

Good-bye, Mr. Zeh. I’ll keep an eye out for those red-tailed hawks you used to buzz me to watch for outside my office. And I’m sure you’d like to know, the ospreys are fishing again.